Why do YEC’s continue to deny that dinosaurs, (in particular raptors) had feathers? At this point, anyone denying this is a long necked feathered African dinosaur burying it’s head in the sand. So well preserved are these feathers that in some cases we can read their pigmentation. These occur far too much to be mere ‘fossil fluff’, so how do YEC’s explain this away? Also, what is the OEC position on this?
Here’s Reasons to Believe’s take on feathered dinosaurs. Basically, they don’t have a problem with the idea, but they don’t accept that they represent transitional forms between dinosaurs and birds.
I’ve no idea what the thinking is behind YECs denying that dinosaurs had feathers. Is it perhaps because it undermines their claims that various historical artefacts (e.g. the Ica Stones, Carlisle Cathedral, the Narmer Palette, Angkor Wat and so on) depict live dinosaurs within human memory? Perhaps @J.E.S might be able to shed some light on YEC thinking here?
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I can’t speculate on the specific motivations of anyone, because we can never truly know those. But I know for myself, it was/is often very easy to simply consider many concepts “guilty by association.” So in that case, anything that seemed like it could in any small way add credence to any evolutionary idea was best discarded. Obviously there’s probably a line where something becomes pretty undeniable, but I don’t know where that line is.
Sort of like how anything that was espoused by a member of the opposing political party was considered hogwash, just because it came out of their mouth, even if it wasn’t really all that bad of an idea. And if we ever did agree with it, we had to pretend it was our idea, or that we’d been saying it all along, even if that wasn’t true.
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YEC Todd Wood agrees with you, (both that dinosaurs had feathers and that the denial of other YEC’s is frustrating) … but he’s a bit of a pariah in standard YEC circles…
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Probably just that old compromising slippery slope thing. Gotta keep that moat filled.
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Good to see, but maybe he could go one step further by saying that birds are dinosaurs in the same way cats are mammals.
I also don’t think feathers make velociraptor any less scary. Imagine if the raptors in Jurassic Park could fly!
I have not read much YEC material on feathered dinosaurs, there have been fakes (such as archaeoraptor). However, I would prefer to give evolution-believing scientists the benefit of the doubt in that area. At any rate, I am open to the idea of a dinosaur with feathers (assuming we find undisputable evidence [such as the body of a dinosaur with feathers] which it seems we pretty much have). Let the record show, however, that even if some dinosaur did have feathers, it is still an enormous stretch to then have them evolving into birds 
. I do not think that dinosaurs with feathers would undermine the Ica stones (well, most of them), Carlisle Cathedral, or Ankgor Wat either…
Unfortunately, Jurassic Park confused and confounded thousands of moviegoers when it changed the name of the dinosaur “deinonychus” to “velociraptor” (which was actually the name of a little ankle-biting theropod) for some uncouth reason… (at this point I really wish that dinosaur names were registered in the spell-checker, and the galling thing is that it registers “deinonychus” as a misspelling, but does not have any problem with “velociraptor.” ). In summary, I would not be terribly afraid of a velociraptor specimen whether it could fly or not, or whether it had feathers or not…
What does this mean @jpm? Do the crocodiles in the moat have feathers too?
Well, we can discuss this…
And here is an interesting National Geographic article about the feathered dinosaur tail in amber with good pictures of it as well: National Geographic.
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Only the crocoducks.
(Actually was a reference to the cartoon AIG has used in the past with the two castles and the attack by evolution. It does seem AIG is a little more accommodating at times recently, though occasionally they revert to the old rhetoric, and the need to keep the battle lines clearly delineated)
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